CPS International

CPS International, the Centre for Peace and Spirituality, as is apparent from its name, is an organization, which aims to promote and reinforce the culture of peace through mind-based spirituality. Non-profit-making and non-political in nature, it is engaged in promoting peace and spirituality through inter-faith efforts. Drawing inspiration from the Quran, the preserved word of God, and the Sunnah, the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad, the Centre seeks to share the spiritual principles of Islam with the world and to reveal its true face, based as it is on peace, tolerance and co-existence.

Our Founder: Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

The Centre was founded in January 2001 by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan, an Islamic scholar who has adopted peace, spirituality and inter-faith harmony as the mission of his life. According to him, peace and spirituality are both, in fact, two aspects of the one truth. Positive thinking at an individual level is called spirituality; when this positive thinking reaches a collective level in society, it culminates in peace. The question is how should the message of peace and spirituality be spread? There are two ways of addressing people: one is at collective level and the other is at individual level. While most speakers prefer to address people en masse, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has – to the point of sacrifice – chosen to interact with people at individual level. According to him, addressing a crowd does not yield any long-term results, for, in very large groups, the individual’s mind is never properly addressed, and therefore individuals – the building blocks of society – are unlikely to change.

Maulana has throughout addressed individuals with the objective of re-engineering their minds, so as to bring about the kind of spiritual revolution in them, which will convert them into positive and peace-loving, spiritual beings. Through his efforts – spanning decades – the Maulana has created a team of individuals who have been spiritually reconditioned, by means of the simple formula: Change yourself – by living a God-oriented life – and you will be able to change the whole world.

CPS and its Affiliates

It is this team of individuals – the CPS Team – trained as they are in the ideologies and principles of peace and spirituality, which will play the role of ambassadors of peace and spirituality to the world. These ambassadors, comprising the thousands of members of CPS International and its global partners, are in the course of uniting peace-loving people by giving them a practicable formula for peace based on contemplative spirituality.

Along with its global partners, CPS International is dedicated to share spiritual wisdom and convey the message of truth to mankind peacefully. Such a mission is the basic need of the 21st century man who, having reached the peak of his technological achievements, is still confronted with negative influences such as stress, materialism, inequality, and the pressures of the workplace and social living. The result is that more and more people today are succumbing to negative emotions such as intolerance, hatred and the urge to retaliate. At an individual level, signs of aggressiveness and at the collective level, signs of violence and disharmony, exhibit a propensity to cause environmental damage and ultimately, terrorism.

Priority #1: To Establish World Peace

We realize that establishing world peace is the number one priority today, as it is the sole path to positive achievement, and is, most importantly, a crucial factor for human survival. It is this message of peace that needs to be entered into each and every household. We feel, however, that simply making appeals in support of peace, or going to the lengths of bombing terrorist hideouts, will not establish peace. The fact is that the terrorism of the present age differs greatly from that of former times. Today, it is not a matter of who has the more sophisticated, and lethal technology; it is more a matter of technology versus ideology, for terrorism has a complete ideology of violence, albeit false and of its own making, to support it. Realizing that terrorism will persist in one form or another, until the ideology of violence is replaced by an ideology of peace, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has developed just such a full-fledged ideology – The Ideology of Peace – derived directly from the Islamic scriptures. CPS and its global associates draw inspiration from this in their major peace efforts, their aim being to give to the world a practical model of peace at an ideological level, so as to replace the culture of violence with the mentality of peaceability.

Interfaith Efforts

CPS International, under Maulana’s direction, is undertaking inter-faith efforts to make people realize that Islam is a religion of peace and spirituality and not of violence. Through such efforts, the Centre and its global partners are in the process of eradicating misconceptions about Islam. The misconceptions have gained currency because information about Islam is being derived, not from Islam’s original sources – the Quran, the word of God, and the Sunnah, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muhammad – but from latter-day interpretations of and commentaries on these sources, and, even worse, from the dubious practices of present-day Muslims in different parts of the world. CPS and its global partners are adopting a scientific approach to understand Islam by distinguishing between Islam – as derived from its original sources – and the conduct of Muslims over the centuries. Thus the formula to get an understanding of the true face of Islam is: "Differentiate between Islam and Muslims. Judge Muslims on the basis of the original Islamic Scriptures and not vice versa."

When people follow this line, they come to realize that the teachings of Islam is actually based on peace and spirituality, which aims at producing a peaceful society by providing the moral basis for individuals to be positive in their outlook and behaviour. Thus Islam is a religion of peace.

The Ideology of Spirituality

The question that comes to mind is how does one start the process of building a positive and peaceful society? At CPS, we believe that there is only one way to do this and that is through spirituality. Although there are two major schools of spiritual discipline: one based on meditation and the other on contemplation, we subscribe to the school of contemplation. We believe that, as it is man’s mind that differentiates him from the rest of creation, it can only be through the development of his mind that man can attain true spirituality. Following this principle, Maulana Wahiduddin Khan has developed a comprehensive Ideology of spirituality, based on contemplation – derived directly from the Islamic scriptures. CPS International and its global partners are striving towards the spread of spirituality by disseminating this ideology of contemplative spirituality and training individuals in its principles.

To help people focus properly on their spiritual existence, CPS imparts spiritual training in the art of clear thinking, the art of conversion, the re-conditioning of the mind, intellectual awakening and personality development; it also proposes aids to peaceful living such as practicing the art of difference management, and upholding the principles of avoidance and ‘status quoism’, etc. Once individuals undergo this training, they are able to re-focus their minds, unleash their spiritual potential and develop intellectually.

The Creation Plan of God

At CPS we believe that man is born with an inquisitive nature. Being endowed with a reasoning faculty, he cannot help but question the activities and phenomena that take place around him. Such a seeker of Truth becomes restless unless rational answers to questions pertaining to the ideology of life, such as the following, are addressed: Who am I? , Where did I come from? Does God exist? Do I need a God? What is the purpose of my life? What is the importance of my mind? Why do I have so many desires? Is my life governed by destiny or free will? Why is there suffering in the world? Where will I go when I leave this world? Does the hereafter exist? How do I achieve salvation? etc. Although the questions are many, we believe that there is only one answer – a reason-based understanding of the Creation Plan of God, which will enable us to understand man’s purpose in life. CPS is making every possible effort to help seekers find rational answers to questions pertaining to the ideology of life and to explain scientifically the Ideology of Monotheism, the concept of the Hereafter and the Creation Plan of God.

When an individual is thus trained in spiritual principles and he gains a rational understanding of the creation plan of God, his life enters a new phase – that of the building of a positive personality in consonance with the spiritual principles of the -- another name for which is God-oriented living. The fact of the matter is that any kind of success – be it the achievement of peace, positivity, spirituality, success in this life or salvation – depends upon living a God-oriented life – with God as the Giver and man purely as the receiver. Just as the earth is the sun’s satellite and its existence would have no meaning without this relationship, in the same way, all of man’s activities should be God-oriented rather than self-oriented. The essence of the issue is that just as all other creatures of the world are compelled by their nature to live a God-oriented life, man, of his own free will, should surrender to God and build his life based on his Creator’s universal principles. This consciousness is the real ascension of man. In this consciousness lies the secret of all success. A creature living a God-oriented life is a peaceful and spiritual person. When such individuals are created in large numbers, it will result in a peaceful society.

CPS Activities

The sphere of action of CPS is global and every peaceful method is being used to address the modern, scientific thought of young people and inquisitive minds of all ages. To develop in them, an understanding of the ideologies of peace and spirituality and to train them in its principles. The methods include one-on-one interactions; weekly and monthly talks and lectures; seminars and conferences; the publication of books, articles and magazines, Al Risala and Spiritual Message and the dissemination of on-line material through the following sites: www.cpsglobal.org, www.alrisala.org and www.goodwordbooks.com broadcasts on television and radio and the distribution of audiovisual material worldwide.

The Centre is uniting peace-loving and spiritual people of the world, using every peaceful method that will be beneficial and helpful in attaining its objective. The vision of CPS is to cause the message of peace and spirituality to enter each and every home of the world, in order to usher in an era of global peace and unity.